The Myth of the "October Surprise"
A throwaway comment in someone else's journal made me realize the extent to which many Americans have accepted and internalized the myth of the "October Surprise." So I thought I'd talk about it -- what was claimed, what was proven, and why it's almost certainly not only impossible -- but would have been irrelevant to the outcome of the Hostage War in any case.
Introduction
The original "October Surprise" was a conspiracy theory that claimed that representatives of Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign, in particular William Casey, met with representatives of the Iranian government from around October 15th through 20th, 1980. They allegedly got the Iranians to refuse to release the hostages to President Carter, and thus prevent his re-election. Historically, the Iranians only released the hostages minutes after President Reagan's inauguration.
More detail on this at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise_conspiracy
Investigations
Notably, there were two Congressional investigations into this theory: the Senate in 1992 and the House in 1993. At the time the Senate was bipartisan and the House clearly dominated by the Democrats. Neither found any credible evidence of such a conspiracy.
Newsweek, The New Republic and the Village Voice (!!!) investigated the issue, and all three found the conspiracy theory baseless. (For the benefit of foreign readers, The New Republic and Newsweek are centrist to moderate-left magazines, and the Village Voice is pretty left-wing). Newsweek discovered that George H. W. Bush (father of the current President Bush, then the Vice-Presidential candidate) had been somewhere else entirely when supposedly meeting with Iranian officials in Paris. The New Republic verified this. The Village Voice pointed out that even Oliver Stone had refused to believe the theory!
Evidence for the theory was scanty and dubious. A jury in an unrelated matter believed a pilot's claim to have flown Reagan associates to one of the meetings. Reagan once admitted to having tried "some things the other way" to free the hostages (presumably, when a candidate) but there was no mention as to what he had tried. And former Iranian President Bani-Sadr claimed knowledge of a "secret deal" -- but one offered by Khomeini, and thus not necessarily the same one alleged by the conspiracy theorists.
The Myth and its Improbability
Nevertheless, the myth persists. Why is this?
IMO, this is the first full manifestation of an ill that is now a chronic condition within the US Democratic Party. This is the ascription of electoral failure to wily opposition "dirty tricks" rather than to poor decisions on the part of one's own leadership.
Think about what would be required for Reagan to pull off the "October Surprise." He would need not only the cooperation of the Iranians (his supposed partners in the deal) but of President Carter himself.
After all, Carter's inertia in the Hostage War was internally-generated. At any point, he could have realized that his policy of negotiation was failing, and prosecuted the war actively against Iran. Nobody had the power to stop Carter in such an action -- not Reagan, not the Iranians -- nobody but Carter himself.
Carter's Failure
Had Carter done something -- anything -- to hurt Iran during this period, he would have broken the impasse and revealed the hollowness of the Iranian position. The Iranians then would have been forced to choose between releasing their prisoners (acknowledging defeat), killing their prisoners (arousing the full depths of American wrath while losing all their leverage to check American action) or impotently accepting repeated punishment at American hands.
In fact, since Saddam Hussein launched his war against Iran in September 1980, things would have gone even worse for the Iranians. America would not have had to choose between a mere aeronaval war and a ground invasion: America could have knocked out Iran's ability to defend her western flank, admitting Iraqi troops into Iran and leading to Iran's utter defeat at the hands of a Sunni Power. Saddam's bestial minions would have made the Iranians suffer far worse than any American occupation would have done. The fate of Iran would have been a standing warning to anyone daring to transgress the rights of Americans.
This was obvious at the time. Yet Carter chose to condemn the Iraqi invasion as an obstacle to "peace," rather than welcoming it as an improvment of the correlation of forces in the region in our favor.
Did Reagan force Carter to remain militarily almost inert for over a year? Did Reagan force Carter to reject the obvious Iraqi alliance? Obviously not, but no "October Surprise" could have worked without Carter doing both, and continuing to do both AFTER such a deal was made.
Conclusion
This delusion on the part of Democrats that their losses are externally imposed due to cunning and unscrupulous Republican machinations, rather than internally generated by foolish and unpopular Democratic policies, has badly hurt the Democrats and is continuing to badly hurt them. It hurts them because it retards self-examination, and revision of these policies to wiser and more popular ones.
We saw this happen in 2000 and 2004. Al Gore was a poor candidate and suffered defeat due to the Clinton Administration's deliberate and pointlessly offensive behavior in Florida (the Elian Gonzalez affair) coupled with Gore's own association with Clinton Administration scandals. John Kerry had skeletons in his closet, which the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth competently exposed. Yet the Democrats preferred to blame their defeats on the Supreme Court and rigged voting machines. (For some reason, pro-Democratic corruption in Illinois and the Southwest failed to counter these factors, and Clinton's victories in 1992 and 1996 cannot be blamed on them).
The reason for this preference is obvious: it's more emotionally comfortable to locate the flaws in the opponent's misdeeds than in the standard-bearer's character. But this is a fatally easy choice to make, because it means that one never improves.
Only by acknowledging error can one advance, and so far the Democrats have refused to acknoweledge error.
A bad omen for Obama in 2008.
END
Introduction
The original "October Surprise" was a conspiracy theory that claimed that representatives of Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign, in particular William Casey, met with representatives of the Iranian government from around October 15th through 20th, 1980. They allegedly got the Iranians to refuse to release the hostages to President Carter, and thus prevent his re-election. Historically, the Iranians only released the hostages minutes after President Reagan's inauguration.
More detail on this at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_surprise_conspiracy
Investigations
Notably, there were two Congressional investigations into this theory: the Senate in 1992 and the House in 1993. At the time the Senate was bipartisan and the House clearly dominated by the Democrats. Neither found any credible evidence of such a conspiracy.
Newsweek, The New Republic and the Village Voice (!!!) investigated the issue, and all three found the conspiracy theory baseless. (For the benefit of foreign readers, The New Republic and Newsweek are centrist to moderate-left magazines, and the Village Voice is pretty left-wing). Newsweek discovered that George H. W. Bush (father of the current President Bush, then the Vice-Presidential candidate) had been somewhere else entirely when supposedly meeting with Iranian officials in Paris. The New Republic verified this. The Village Voice pointed out that even Oliver Stone had refused to believe the theory!
Evidence for the theory was scanty and dubious. A jury in an unrelated matter believed a pilot's claim to have flown Reagan associates to one of the meetings. Reagan once admitted to having tried "some things the other way" to free the hostages (presumably, when a candidate) but there was no mention as to what he had tried. And former Iranian President Bani-Sadr claimed knowledge of a "secret deal" -- but one offered by Khomeini, and thus not necessarily the same one alleged by the conspiracy theorists.
The Myth and its Improbability
Nevertheless, the myth persists. Why is this?
IMO, this is the first full manifestation of an ill that is now a chronic condition within the US Democratic Party. This is the ascription of electoral failure to wily opposition "dirty tricks" rather than to poor decisions on the part of one's own leadership.
Think about what would be required for Reagan to pull off the "October Surprise." He would need not only the cooperation of the Iranians (his supposed partners in the deal) but of President Carter himself.
After all, Carter's inertia in the Hostage War was internally-generated. At any point, he could have realized that his policy of negotiation was failing, and prosecuted the war actively against Iran. Nobody had the power to stop Carter in such an action -- not Reagan, not the Iranians -- nobody but Carter himself.
Carter's Failure
Had Carter done something -- anything -- to hurt Iran during this period, he would have broken the impasse and revealed the hollowness of the Iranian position. The Iranians then would have been forced to choose between releasing their prisoners (acknowledging defeat), killing their prisoners (arousing the full depths of American wrath while losing all their leverage to check American action) or impotently accepting repeated punishment at American hands.
In fact, since Saddam Hussein launched his war against Iran in September 1980, things would have gone even worse for the Iranians. America would not have had to choose between a mere aeronaval war and a ground invasion: America could have knocked out Iran's ability to defend her western flank, admitting Iraqi troops into Iran and leading to Iran's utter defeat at the hands of a Sunni Power. Saddam's bestial minions would have made the Iranians suffer far worse than any American occupation would have done. The fate of Iran would have been a standing warning to anyone daring to transgress the rights of Americans.
This was obvious at the time. Yet Carter chose to condemn the Iraqi invasion as an obstacle to "peace," rather than welcoming it as an improvment of the correlation of forces in the region in our favor.
Did Reagan force Carter to remain militarily almost inert for over a year? Did Reagan force Carter to reject the obvious Iraqi alliance? Obviously not, but no "October Surprise" could have worked without Carter doing both, and continuing to do both AFTER such a deal was made.
Conclusion
This delusion on the part of Democrats that their losses are externally imposed due to cunning and unscrupulous Republican machinations, rather than internally generated by foolish and unpopular Democratic policies, has badly hurt the Democrats and is continuing to badly hurt them. It hurts them because it retards self-examination, and revision of these policies to wiser and more popular ones.
We saw this happen in 2000 and 2004. Al Gore was a poor candidate and suffered defeat due to the Clinton Administration's deliberate and pointlessly offensive behavior in Florida (the Elian Gonzalez affair) coupled with Gore's own association with Clinton Administration scandals. John Kerry had skeletons in his closet, which the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth competently exposed. Yet the Democrats preferred to blame their defeats on the Supreme Court and rigged voting machines. (For some reason, pro-Democratic corruption in Illinois and the Southwest failed to counter these factors, and Clinton's victories in 1992 and 1996 cannot be blamed on them).
The reason for this preference is obvious: it's more emotionally comfortable to locate the flaws in the opponent's misdeeds than in the standard-bearer's character. But this is a fatally easy choice to make, because it means that one never improves.
Only by acknowledging error can one advance, and so far the Democrats have refused to acknoweledge error.
A bad omen for Obama in 2008.
END